


A Modern Devil - or - Scenes From A Broken Mirror

by AdderTwist



Category: Static Shock
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Angst, F/F, F/M, M/M, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-08-23
Updated: 2010-08-23
Packaged: 2017-10-11 05:16:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,194
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/108820
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdderTwist/pseuds/AdderTwist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are many things which can change the way a mind works. Ten yards of distance, or a few extra words, or a little less luck  - a tiny thing like that can be all it takes to make the world a bleaker place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue - All In One Breath; Set Us A Stage

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SandyQuinn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SandyQuinn/gifts).



> It doesn't take much, to give us a tyrant instead of a peacekeeper.

Once upon a time, in a city called Dakota, there were fires...

 

 But it's never that simple, is it?

 

 This world is only a breath away from one you've been told of already. So let's go back, six years before the fires, and take a look.

 

 Of course, we all know one way that that world turns out.

 

Some of us know two, quite similar, worlds. One with, for example, Rick Stone rather than Richie Foley. Not quite the same, but closer together than one might expect. Some things seem so major, but twist so little around them. Humans are unpredictable and versatile; they can often spring back into roughly the same concepts after a world-shaking event.

 

But nothing is as simple as that; let us show you here what a difference, for example, one extra sentence, which in other worlds, was thought but not spoken, can have on a city.

 

 The words? _"Maybe someone else, so he'll have a chance to socialise."_

 And how do we get there?

Well.

 

\------------------------

 

 

It's not like Virgil was some - disturbed kid, exactly.

 

But his mother had died when he was eight, and the eager, cheerful kid in him had stuttered right out. Obviously. He'd been filled to the brim and further with the grief of it, the horror of it, and.

 

Well, it was just that - that had made him a little introverted, a little quiet. For years.

 

It was a difficult habit to break, especially when he was always around the same people; nobody tried very hard to make friends with him after the unresponsive quiet he'd given them at eight.

 

And even if, by twelve, he would have been quietly eager to talk again, to settle back into a real routine, by now nobody was getting really close.

 

Oh, he'd still made friends, a little. There was Frieda, and he got along pretty well with a lot of people, but he wasn't tight with any of them.

 

(He wasn't totally tight with his family, either. It's hard, when you're grieving, to be close to someone else who's grieving, without only wanting to blindly console each other. He loved his dad and his sister, yeah, but he didn't talk to them about anything on his mind very much, unless he was sure it was harmless. They didn't know him that well anymore.)

 

So in high school, most of them knew each other, and the teachers had talked to their earlier teachers, and -

 

A new kid was ushered in. A skinny, wide-eyed little thing, scrawny and short and a little pointy, blond hair sort of spiky, blue eyes behind glasses, pallid and nervous. The new kid glanced around, nervously, and the teacher opened her mouth.

 

"Alright, everyone, this is Richard Foley. Virgil, can - "

 

The teacher escorting Richard stepped forward, murmured briefly to their current teacher. (The results, inaudible, are given to you readers at the beginning of this prologue.)

 

"...Ah, okay - William, can you show Richard around the school today?"

 

One of the other boys glanced up, nodded politely, amiably, and not too personally, and went back to doodling.

 

"Hi," Virgil overhears, and he quietly starts scribbling, disinterested. William looks up, flashing an encouraging little smile. "Um. It's - just Richie, not Richard, if you want."

"Sure," William says, "and just call me Will."

 

Virgil has more important things to do, and goes back to writing lazily. Some scrawny jumpy little new kid. Whatever.

 

 

\--------------

 

 

So here is the Virgil Hawkins you know. Here is the Richard Foley you know.

And here is where the world twists away. One thought voiced, which wasn't in another world, and decisions are altered, subtly at first.

 

Of course, Richie will still be an influence in the up and coming life of Virgil, but not as he used to be. Even this one little sentence can change the shape of lives. 


	2. Prelude To A Reflection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The distance between two rows of crates on a loading dock. That is the amount of distance it takes to break a person, perhaps irreperably.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All of this is still a work in progress. Constructive criticism is my favourite treat.

Virgil Hawkins is young, at this point.

Not quite innocent, because he's a scared black kid in a white neighbourhood with a dead mom and a real grief in him for that, but at this point, he is not the menace he will be, soon.

Francis Stone - F-Stop, broad-shouldered and handsome and cheerfully cruel - is going to be here tonight. So some friends of his sister's - he doubts she knows about this side of their lives, or she'd hate them, and Sharon is good at hate - had drawn Virgil aside, told him that tonight was the night, that F-Stop wouldn't lay a finger on him again, and pressed the ugly weight of a gun into his hands.

The idea is that Virgil is meant to shoot him, and it forms a leaden knot of horror in his stomach. But given the choice between having the shit beaten out of him by gang-bangers and pretending to really want to shoot someone, it's easy. (Virgil will stand up for what he believes in, but not pointlessly.) He waits, until none of the people who brought him here are paying attention, and then he drops the gun in the ocean. Breathes a prayer to whatever god of life or death or blood is watching over him in thanks, stares at the little bubbles. Must have been air in the barrel, he thinks, getting rid of the nightmare of a living thing coiled to kill.

People are arriving. Nobody has shot yet, until near the ocean, right on one of the piers, the first snarling cracks of gunfire. Shouts. Insults. People are talking trash at the top of their lungs and trying to shoot each other in the lungs, speaking of. It's like they don't see any difference between hurting someone with words and hurting them with lead.

Virgil runs, blindly, away from the violence he hears. He feels like a rabbit, heart pounding hard enough that he can feel it struggling against his ribs. His mom died of a gunshot, and terror is making a knot in his throat that it's hard to swallow past; maybe he'll die of a gunshot too. Haah. What the fuck was he thinking? He can't even look at a goddamn realistic water pistol without terror choking him. He's terrified, and alone, and working into the heart of a maze of shipping crates.

 He doesn't want to die here. He doesn't want to be shot, or - or whatever else could happen in a place like this.

 The tang of sea-spray is almost refreshing, if you don't know what's about to happen here.

 But if you do, then -

 Look, just watch closely.

 What's that? A tiny whiff of something which looks too close to violet to be smoke, and then an explosion outwards of splinters and cloyingly sweet purple smog.

 Virgil is standing against the container when it goes.

 The impact is massive. It's a tooth-rattling sensation, too all-encompassing to comprehend. Blindingly loud and deafeningly bright, all crawling pain and burning into the inside of the skeleton and working its way out in a mapwork of shock. It spreads out massively, rising into the air like a Horseman of the Apocalypse, which is approximately what it has the power to be.

 

As for Virgil? He lies gasping in a ruin, bloodied from the wrecked wood and torn metal, lying against a broken electrical transformer and trying to breathe, violet smoke choking him. Wood in chunks is scattered all around him, and his clothes have been torn by the sheer force of it, tattered and showing gleams of dark, bleeding skin. He's dying, he thinks wildly, head a throbbing, heavy burn, searing him, and whole body tingling like he's been set alight from the inside out. He manages to roll onto his stomach, dry-heaves from pain, and deep purple strings of saliva look like ink against the boardwalk, and he can't breathe and it hurts and it keeps building pressure in him, and then he makes a hoarse sound, stomach contracting with pain, and curls in on himself.

 

 

 He wakes up, alone, nine hours later.

 Carefully he checks. Not bleeding anymore, except for one cut on his stomach, and that one's only bleeding sluggishly when he prods at it. Limbs more or less intact, too. He prods and wriggles gingerly, managing to get to a sitting position and lean his elbows on his thighs; nothing broken. Except his head hurts so much he thinks, with a weak snicker, that he might have broken his skull open and this whole thing is a wild hallucination. As – as he lies somewhere bleeding, head cracked open, massive brain trauma -

But enough of that. Blearily, dazedly, he tries to take stock of his surroundings.

 Oh. Right.

 It looks, from the shifting of debris, like someone found him here and left him for dead.

 For some reason, that's really hilarious; he gives a delighted laugh, and then quiets, because he doesn’t know why he finds that funny, and he feels sick, and his head hurts, and he wants to break things with an intensity he’s never felt before. Violence bubbles up in his chest, because he hurts and it’s someone’s fault, but he’s never felt this before, a blind craving to punch the world, or something. It’s sick, he thinks distantly, and is crushed by a quiet sense of betrayal from his own body, his own brain, and coughs out more slimy, venomous purple when he tries to take a calming breath.

  The seed is planted. Disoriented, Virgil Hawkins staggers home, rubbing his head, and is unusually unresponsive.

 "What happened?" Sharon asks, head cocked, watching Virgil intently.

"Jus' some guys," Virgil feels himself mutter, tongue thick, and locks himself in the bathroom to shower. The water that leaves is tinged sweet violet, and he watches it for a moment, then closes his eyes, leaning his head wearily on the tiles. Washes at blood and ocean spray and cloying purple smog, coughs and hacks and comes out of the too-hot water tingling, still feeling soaked in it, exhausted to the bone.

 Virgil sleeps, and sleeps more. He misses school.

 

 

"Are you okay?" his father asks, and Virgil rolls on his side, away from his father.

"Sick," he mutters. "G'away."

"Anything I can get you?"

"Whatever they use to put down animals," Virgil mumbles, pulls the pillow over his head with aching arms, and hears his father sigh. Quiet shift as he gets up, slides out, and the youth is alone again.

 

 

After four days, he feels abruptly alert, hungry, something - else. He tries to get up, but he generates enough static cling to bring the sheets and all with him. Opens his eyes, takes a huge breath, and shoves the covers away, fleeing to the hallway.

Something hisses fury in his head when he sees Sharon, and he bares his teeth at her without pausing to think about it, dashing away down the stares.

"What the hell," she grumbles behind him, and he swerves into the kitchen, in desperate and urgent need of food.

One, two, three raw eggs before his brain catches up and he gags and spits gooey clear liquid into the sink, retching. Oh god, why did he do that? Again he feels claustrophobic, threatened by his own brain. He scratches his arms, too hard, leaves marks, and then jerks his head to the side and starts organising a breakfast that makes sense. He pauses a couple of times, to check that each thing is something that he's eaten before, and his hands shake as he finally, restlessly, settles on toast with too much peanut butter.

 

 

It's like he doesn't know why he reacts as he does. He wolf-whistles a football player at school, and has to run desperately out via the oval to escape, feet pounding on the pavement into town, laughing wildly and helplessly. He starts arguments, he wants to crawl out of his skin, and finds himself, one week after the incident, with his belongings in a backpack, knuckles grazed from where he punched his father (how did it happen, what's going on, it makes no sense - ), and staring down someone's attack dog. He bares his teeth, hears the dog whine-snarl, and then there's a furious tumbling moment, the skin and flesh of his arm tearing under its teeth, forcing the beast's jaws open and then punching it in the nose.

 

The dog retreats with a howl, and Virgil laughs, tilting his head back, steals a decent-looking car, because he can, electricity jolting and sparkling off his fingers, and it doesn't even occur to him to question that at all, grinning like a wolf and revving the engine at the cowering, useless dog.

 It does occur to him, though, that Virgil Hawkins is a good name, for a good kid, who doesn't hit his dad and doesn't steal cars and doesn't feel like he can't stop moving, so he abandons it like a shirt that's too small, laughing. A better one will occur to him later.

 

(He can't go back. He's been too sick in his head for that, he can feel it, and terror is fuelling him to not think ahead, because it will only be worse.)

 

And that will be the death of Virgil Hawkins, and the birth of Static.


End file.
